


That Which We Call A Rose

by emperors_girl



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff without Plot, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emperors_girl/pseuds/emperors_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is Marie-Anne, but they call her Olympe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which We Call A Rose

Her name is Marie-Anne, but they call her Olympe.

Well. Her friends call her that, anyway, and her parents’ friends. She thinks her Papa might have called her that, the first time, and she thinks it may have been a tease for her Dad’s sake, but neither of her parents really ever calls her that. 

Her Dad calls her by her name and only ever by her name, but he’s got a way of saying it where she can tell how much trouble she’s in by which syllable he emphasizes: the last syllable means trouble right enough, but it’s when he uses the middle one that she knows she’s really in for it. 

(And worse than that, even, a hundred times worse, is when she sneaks home from her first all-night party and finds him waiting up with coffee gone cold and face ghostly pale, and the way he just breathes out her name, relief and heartbreak and so much fear for her, and it’s in her blood, she knows, but that’s no excuse, and she doesn’t go out again after that for years, and by the time she goes again, she knows better.) 

Her Papa never calls her by her real name. He calls her ma belle, and ma choupinette, and ma lutine, and sometimes, when he wants to get Dad riled, ma princesse (and then they’ll fight about whether or not her Papa is promoting a monarchist leaning to the next generation and whether or not her Dad has a stick shoved somewhere unmentionable, and they’re only playing, she knows, because she’s heard their real fights once or twice and those are the kind they always save for when she’s supposed to be asleep in her bed). When he’s painting, he calls her mon ciel étoilé, and he calls her Dad ma raison de vivre, but not to his face and it’s a secret they keep, but the best part of the secret is that her Dad knows they’re keeping it from him and it makes him smile, but only when her Papa isn’t looking. 

A boy in her grade calls her ugly, once. She doesn’t tell her Papa, can’t bring herself to say it when he asks her what’s wrong, but she does tell her Dad and he gets this look on his face, one that she doesn’t understand for years afterward. 

“You are beautiful, Marie-Anne,” he tells her, and he’s so serious and forceful that she can’t help but believe him. 

And the truth is, she knows she’s not pretty. She doesn’t have the shiny golden hair her Dad has, and she doesn’t have his high cheekbones and piercing eyes. Her hair is dark and curled and her face is soft. Her eyes are pale, but not bright. She has her Dad’s nose, she thinks, and maybe even his ears, but that could be her imagination. She knows how genetics work, or she does eventually and probably much sooner than her classmates thanks to the combination of medical doctors and early-childhood educators that serve as her babysitters in those early years. So she knows, she does know that only one of her parents is actually related to her, and if the shape of her face is any evidence, it’s not the parent that has people stop on the street to bask in his beauty. 

Still, she doesn’t mind, not really. She thinks her Papa might mind, sometimes, but he never says, and he calls her ma belle often enough and seriously enough that she knows he thinks she’s beautiful. And she’s smart, that she can tell without anyone’s help. Someone told her once that her Papa was good at everything he ever tried, and it’s a comfort to know all that skill must be inside her somewhere, just waiting for her to pick up a pen or a set of pointe shoes. (Of course, no one’s ever told her, not in so many words, that her Papa is his own least favorite person in the world; that’s inside of her, too, and someday she’ll have to reckon with that.) 

For now, though, she just remembers the way her Papa smiles at her when he reads to her at night, and the way her Dad lingers in the doorway and laughs at the character voices her Papa does. They wait until they're in the hall to kiss, but she sees them anyway, and she hears them when her Papa says, “Come on then, Apollo, let's take this to bed.” But before they go, her Papa looks back at her, winks and says, “Goodnight, my love.” And Marie-Anne, Olympe, she knows she's the most loved little girl in all of Paris, no matter what anyone calls her.


End file.
